Is this budget gaming case a wolf in sheep's clothing?

For

Against

This new contender from Tsunami is a modest midi ATX case and in this company its a lightweight, literally, as you soon learn when you try picking the thing up – it's made from very thin sheet metal.

The front panel is the only part that shouts 'design', and only then in a muffled way as if a metaphorical hand has been slapped over the designer's mouth.

There are a some curves, a moderately funky power button, and a natty matt black finish. There are three lurid colour options for the glossy part of the plastic front panel, aside from the black version shown here.

The insides follow the traditional layout, that is to say traditional for normal PC chassis, but not for the requirements of a gaming chassis. The power supply unit sits on the top, rather than following the accepted pattern of sloping off to the bottom of the case to keep the heat away from the processor. To support this there is a very small fold of metal. Yes, you've four screws, but these are in the rather thin rear panel.

The interior space is really, really tight. Fitting an ATX board leaves just a few millimetres all round. There's no room under the board for cables or to get some air moving around it.

There are just four drive bays in total, and everything is screwed in old-school style, no fancy fittings here. The top 5.25-inch bay has a door for your DVD drive.

Gaming on the side…

Having just two hard drive bays incorporated into the design is pushing it, you'll need to be quite sure that's all you need. There is enough room for more drives, but no brackets or fixings, or indeed any provision for a 2.5-inch drive.

At least there is room for nice big graphics cards, which is just as well as that's sort of the point. Cooling is provided by just one fan, an 80mm job on the back panel. This is incredibly inadequate for the kind of heat that serious gaming kit will generate inside such a small case. You can fit more; there are holes for another small fan over the processor, and there are a few grills dotted about, on the back, side and bottom, and a few holes worked into the design on the sides of the front panel, but it's just not enough.

What we have here folks is a bog standard metal box that just fits the required components. So what makes this a gaming case? Well it is black and has the word 'Gaming' on the front. That's about it.

Almost every other specialist aspect of a gaming case is missing. As you might have guessed by now, we are generally unimpressed by the Gaming Manager. This is hardly surprising when you consider its price. This case had to be inexpensive to avoid a more serious drubbing, and it was. At £21 some of our grumbles and gripes faded.

The case is as cheap as and can be forgiven for looking like it. However, this is a group test of gaming cases, and here it completely fails…

But not a gamer's case

Are we being scathing and unfair? Possibly. Tsunami's website doesn't even appear to put the Gaming Manager in its section for gaming cases. If you are on a tight budget and have undemanding hardware then it fits the (small) bill. For proper gaming cases – look elsewhere.